August 20, 2009

It is my observation that those who are concerned about the health of the planet fall into two camps: the tribalists and the non-profiteers. Neither is the answer to the planetary predicament. (If you were not aware that there was a predicament, please do a Google search of "Limits to Growth" at this site.)

The other camp believes that having more non-profits will save the planet. One example is the proliferation of Microfinance. Those who get a warm and fuzzy feeling about micro lending need to be aware that the average loan rate for a group like Kiva.org is approximately 24%. The original definition of usury was charging interest period. Credit is the root cause of our predicament -- not the solution.

What to Do?

First of all, we have to acknowledge that the following is true:

There is as yet no civilized society, But only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, But only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, We can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

— Felix Adler (1851-1933)

We have to come up with something that has not been tried. Tribalism has been tried and it failed miserably. Non-profiteering is being tried on a massive scale and has not shifted our destructive course in any macro measurable way.

I've probably bogged readers down in the detail that I've provided at this site in the past. The details are not important. The important thing is to establish an institution that provides capital for quality environments -- whether single family homes or larger, comprehensive campuses -- around the world. Those who provide the capital will not earn interest. The concept of money earning interest discounts the future. Instead, our new breed of capitalists will have access to the assets at the lesser of cost or market.

We have made things far too complicated. It's time for a change.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

July 03, 2009

Those who are mindful are beginning to realize that only an entirely
new operating system can prevent the collapse of civilization. However,
to date, no one has presented such a system. This presentation outlines
a system that has the potential to serve as a viable replacement for
the current paradigm.

February 21, 2007

Governments govern, armies wage war, schools teach, surgeons cut and
corporations profit. The world we live in is a reflection, in part, of
the institutions that we have establised. If we wish to have
leadership, peace, development, healing and sharing we need to change
the institutions that produce today's results. This will require some
of our existing institutions to be replaced, some to be reformed, as
well as some new ones to be added. [p.212, The Master Strategist] (More Excerpts here)

Read more of this blog for some ideas. Briefly, some shifts that are required: possess to access; debt to equity; fragmentation to integration; commuting to traveling; exclusive to inclusive; and stagnation to development. If these shifts take place, we will transition from a world of governing, war, teaching, cutting and profiting to one of leadership, peace, development, healing and sharing.

December 26, 2006

Rhizome structure has no inherent instability, but it will quickly reorder into hierarchy if we do not address the institutions within our society that serve to perpetuate hierarchy. The abstract notion of ownership serves as the single, greatest perpetuator of hierarchy. When one steps back and examines the notion of “owning” something, the abstraction becomes readily apparent. Ownership represents nothing more than a power-relationship—the ability to control. The tribal institution of “Ownership by use” on the other hand, suggests simply that one can only “own” those things that they put to immediate, direct and personal use to meet basic needs—and not more. A society crosses the memetic Rubicon when it accepts the abstraction that ownership can extend beyond the exclusive needs of one individual for survival. ( Read Jason Godesky on Ownership ) Abstract ownership begins when society accepts a claim of symbolic control of something without the requirement of immediate, direct and personal use. Hierarchy, at any level, requires this excess, abstract ownership—it represents the symbolic capital that forms the foundation of all stratification. In the simplest terms, in order to destroy the engine of hierarchy, we must destroy the mechanism of ownership. Proposing to destroy ownership may seem impractical, but societies have achieved similar feats before—such as the !Kung tribe’s aversion to status. If a society accepts that hierarchy fails the needs of human ontogeny, then one can argue that ownership—the engine of hierarchy—acts detrimentally to human needs. Like the !Kung taboo on status, a taboo on ownership would represent a serious defeat for hierarchy and all that it represents.

December 10, 2006

It seems to me that the overwhelming evidence is that we are woefully inefficient. The question is how to get ourselves out of the mess by not using the same sort of thinking -- to paraphrase Einstein -- that got us into the mess.

December 05, 2006

In God and the Evolving Universe, the authors describe a book written by George Leonard in 1968. In the book, Education and Ecstasy, Leonard proposes "daring and creative ways in which schools at every level can simultaneously cultivate our physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual capabilities." Leonard's list of things that students can do in such schools:

-learn the commonly agreed upon skills and knowledge of the ongoing culture (reading, writing, figuring, history, and the like), and to learn them joyfully

-learn how to ring creative changes on all that is currently agreed upon

-learn delight, not aggression; sharing, not excessive acquisition; and uniqueness, not narrow competition

-learn heightened awareness of emotional, sensory, and bodily states and, through this, increased empathy for other people

-learn how to enter and enjoy various states of consciousness in preparation for a life of change

-learn how to explore and enjoy relations between people

-learn how to learn, because learning -- a word that includes singing, dancing, interacting, and much more -- is the main purpose of life.

Obviously, these have not been implemented on a widespread basis in the period since 1968. The last one describes the foundation/inspiration for the institution described on the blog. Society has had little success in all of these areas because of the powerful influence on education by those who have drawn boundaries to learning and want to defend those boundaries. Scholarships to the institution described will seek those of all ages who demonstrate a committment to learning without boundaries. While it may be close to impossible to introduce this type of learning in public schools -- at least for the foreseeable future -- it is possible to introduce it in a private institution. It is also interesting to note that "sharing, not excessive acquisition" is the cornerstone of the institution.

December 01, 2006

Society has a host of problems that seem to be irreversible. Global warming. Obesity. Depression. Each problem is related. For example, obesity is the result of our propensity to drive everywhere and spend most of our days sitting at a desk. Our propensity to drive everywhere is likely a cause of global warming. Sitting at a desk leads to obesity and depression. Currently, there are no institutions that do anything meaningful in the way of making the necessary shifts. Most spend all their time defining the problem and little in the way of providing solutions. The answers most often center around public policy that would provide little in the way of meaningful change. Al Gore's movie -- and book, I presume -- suggest some changes that individuals might make, but those changes are but a tiny fraction of the changes required in order to preserve some semblance of a quality life for all. It should be made clear at this point that by quality of life, we mean the ability to soar like eagles, rather than be caged like battery hens -- paraphrasing a comment by Paul Ehrlich in one of his books.

Project Paradigm will be primarily centered around the concept that it is better to have access rather than to possess. Interestingly enough, this is a consistent theme in all the major religions. The institution proposed also shares many characteristics with the wealthy -- the one exception being the aforementioned emphasis on having access rather than possessing. Possessing is what makes the wealthy unhappy.

Effectively, the institutional structure presented is a new type of family. One centered around life-long learning rather than blood. This structure -- by design -- discourages the boundaries that so shape all institutions today. It is becoming increasingly obvious that our current institutions -- family itself, the state, private enterprise and free markets -- are unable to provide the services that are required for dynamic change.

This is an outline of how we can build an institution that is capable of meaningful change.
The theologian John Crossan described the Christian utopian dream "in which material and spiritual goods, political and religious resources, economic and trandscendental accesses are equally available to all without interference from brokers, mediators, or intermediaries."

--God and the Evolving Universe, p. 42, isbn1585721375

We have not been successful in building this infrastructure. However, it would be fairly simple to do. We create jobs that do not require creativity because many crave routine. In a sense, we have shaped our world for this segment of the population. The routine of the workplace has led to stress at home. The world now requires two breadwinners for each household and lack of security in retirement. Is there another model?

The solution to overpopulation is more monks.
--Attributed to the Dalai Lama

A major contemporary human problem, for instance, is that the rate of cultural evolution in science and technology has been extraordinarily high in contrast with the snail's pace of change in the social attitudes and political institutions that might channel the uses of technology in more beneficial directions. No one knows exactly what sorts of societal effort might be required to substantially redress that imbalance in evolutionary rates, but it is clear to me that such an effort, if successful, could greatly brighten the human prospect.

Source: Human Natures, p.5&6, isbn 155963779x

The goal is to build an infrastructure that can support all of the above circumstances.

Any comprehensive education should include a liberal arts background. (According to a character in Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, the Greeks allowed slaves to take vocational courses, but did not permit them to take liberal arts courses as this might give them the ability to make a case for their liberation. In addition, students should have a clear understanding of systems. (We were recently told by someone that they did not believe that global warming was caused by man. The speaker had been a biologist at least 15 years ago and maybe more. He had just told us that he doesn't read. Hmmm.) We currently have a failure -- commencing at least 100 years ago -- to be critical thinkers. This has resulted in us not knowing that we are slaves to the corporatist/materialist system.

We must radically adjust our education system in order to speed up the evolution shortfall mentioned by Paul Ehrlich in Human Natures. Education has to be life-long and with no boundaries.

Rather than faith being the foundation for this new institution, scholarship will be the foundation. It is quite clear that in order to soar like eagles in the future, we must tackle the overpopulation problem and we must reduce the amount of consumption per capita in 1st World countries. Why not do it in a comprehensive way that is exciting and provides a quality living and learning environment for participants.

Two more related quotes:

The original universities in the middle ages were simply collections of teachers who attracted students because they had something to offer. They were the marketplace of ideas, located all over town, where people could shop around for the kinds of ideas and learning which made sense to them. By contrast, the isolated and over-administered university of today kills the variety and intensity of the different ideas at the university and also limits the student's opportunity to shop for ideas.
--A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander, P. 232

What might the company of the future look like? Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary who is now president of Harvard University, suggests in the latest Harvard Business Review that the American research university (IE, Harvard and its few peers) might be a model. He does not mean that firms should set up their own "universities" -- although plenty, from Motorola to McDonald's, have done that. Instead, they should adopt the research university's fluid and decentralised approach to creativity and hierarchy. "If you look at the organisations in the economy where the greatest value is being added," argues Mr. Summers, "they are increasingly the organisations that share the values and characteristics of universities."
--The Economist, July 26th, 2003, P. 62

I don't believe that there is enough flexibility in today's university to get society up to speed. What I am proposing is an institution that operates as a university, a company, and a community with an ethical foundation.

What would this new institution look like? How would it operate? It would look much like a university. Vehicles would be permitted on the periphery only. (It also might be incorporated into existing pedestrian-friendly areas.) The entire place would be operated by scholars/fellows in return for room/board/incidentals. Much like a monk, commitment might be for a lifetime and would involve not having children while in the system. Tenure for both scholars and fellows would be granted after say 40 quarters in the system. The infrastructure and operational costs would be covered by patrons/members in return for being in the community. Access to this "club" would include not just access to first-class lodging and meals, but also access to the latest in integral health care and access to education as well as the chance to participate in cutting-edge research. The ratio between scholars/fellows and patrons/members would be approximately 1 to 1.

Harry Dent gets part way there in the following:

Longer learning cycles for youth, continuous learning throughout adulthood, and multiple-career cycles are on the rise. If we can, we should remain in a learning mode throughout life, trying different jobs and functions instead of getting locked into a single career path, putting off having kids until we gain more wisdom and maturity (so more of us can develop the higher levels of right-brain capacity). And why not? We continue to live longer. What better way to use those years than to take longer to educate ourselves, and prepare for varied and interesting careers, and acquire more complex skills and organizational systems (networks)? Better yet, there is no age at which it's too late to learn. You can develop these more right-brain capacities at any time, providing you already have the basic left-brain capacities that precede them.

Today, human maturity means developing the intuitive capacities to recognize your own needs, your own values, and your own purpose. It requires granting yourself permission to pursue your particular path, via your own learning process. This is what Maslow calls self-actualization in his hierarchy of human needs. This occurs increasingly between the relativistic and nonlinear stages of development. That is where the leading edge of people are moving, at this point in time. The most leading-edge nonlinear thinkers are the visionaries and entrepreneurs who are leading us into this new era, and are setting new moral values consistent with a new economy and new stage of consciousness.

The new paradigm of the right-brain revolution is the individual who determines, through introspection and personal evaluation, how he or she best fits into society. The new organizational paradigm is a school of minnows instead of a whale - a network of vertical and horizontal intelligence and learning that depends on individual creativity and accountability. Since the new organization runs from the customer back, not the top down, such organizations require inner-directed people who, at a minimum, make decisions and are operating in the self-esteem stage, and even better leaders and entrepreneurs who are primarily in the self-actualization stage.

This new institution is extremely compelling for those who want an education without boundaries and without out-of-pocket expense. It is also compelling for those who want to conduct integral research and teach without the normal specialization constraints of today's universities. Last, but not least, it is compelling for patrons/members who think that the current system is ill-equipped to handle the challenges of the future.

February 10, 2006

Thus at every level -- from the biological to the psychological to the social to the cultural -- there is a fundamental need for what I call "scaffolding." We depend on instructions, guidelines, a context, a relationship, a language to venture meaningfully into the wilds of our own minds and the wilds of nature, the cosmos in which we find ourselves, even if we sometimes diverge from the beaten track and forge our own way through uncharted domains. That body of knowledge has been developed, refined, and distilled over centuries and millennia by lineages of those who have come before; lineages in survival through hunting and gathering; lineages in the domestication of wild plants and animals; lineages in the sciences, in engineering and architecture, in the arts, and in the meditative traditions as well. These lineages have bequeathed to us a history of richly developed and hard-won knowledge of certain landscapes, and the skills required for navigating them effectively, distilled and framed in ways that we can build on, but only after we have penetrated and understood the paths others have blazed, their instructions for doing what they did and going where they went, only after we become intimate to at least some degree with the terrain and challenges they described and the solutions they arrived at. [p.95]

But yet, as the result of the deplorable state of contemporary society, we are exposed to little of this. If we are exposed to it, it is as an aid to help us sell more or help us cope with meaningless work. Many are drawn to fundamental religion -- even late in life -- because they are not exposed to any alternatives. Little "scaffolding" is built and few, if any, paths explored.

Quoting Marcel Proust:

The true journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having fresh eyes. [196]

Quoting T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time... [p.427]

Paraphrasing Bertrand Russell, human beings have learned to fly in the air and descend underneath the sea. But we haven't yet learned to live on the land. The last frontier for us is not the oceans, nor outer space, as interesting and enticing as they may be. The last and most important and most urgent frontier for us is the human mind. It is knowing ourselves, and most importantly, from the inside! The last frontier is really consciousness itself. It is the coming together of everything we know, of all the wisdom traditions of all the peoples of this planet, including all our different ways of knowing, through science, through the arts, through native traditions, through spiritual inquiry. This is the challenge of our era and of our species, now that we are so networked together throughout the world in so many ways, so that what happens in Baghdad or Kuala Lumpur, or Mexico City or Washington, or Kabul, or Beijing or anywhere else can wind up deeply affecting people's lives the next day or the next month virtually anywhere else in the world. It is not suggesting that we bury our head somewhere and only preoccupy ourselves with our own self-interests and try to maximize our own safety or happiness or gain. Rather, our entire exploration of mindfulness and the possibilities of healing our lives and the world is offering us a way to be in the world that does not get so caught up in minute preoccupations with individual trees and branches, as important as that level of understanding may be. It is reminding us to look around at the forest itself from time to time and know it directly in its fullness, without the distorting lenses of narrowly conceived and unexamined thoughts and opinions, usually driven by wanting, or aversion, or delusion. [p.505]

How do we begin the journey? Is there a way to facilitate that journey?

February 05, 2006

...perhaps you have noticed that the sense of self is telling us all the time that we are not complete. It tells us that we have to get someplace else, attain what needs to be achieved, become whole, become happy, make a difference, get on with it, all of which may indeed be partially true and relatively true, and to that degree, we need to honor those intuitions. But it forgets to remind us that, on a deeper level, beyond appearances and time, whatever needs to be attained is already here, now -- that there is no improving the self -- only knowing its true nature as both empty and full, and therefore profoundly useful.

Knowing that in the deepest of ways, knowing it with the entirety of our being, we can then rest in the knowing itself and act much less self-centeredly in the world, potentially in amazingly creative ways for the benefit of other beings and with an attitude of non-harming and non-forcing. We can do this because we know on some fundamental level, not merely intellectually, that "them" is always "us." This interconnectedness is primary. It is the birthplace of empathy and compassion, of our feeling for the other, our impulse and tendency to put ourself in the place of the other, to feel with the other. This is the foundation for ethics and morality, for becoming fully human -- beyond the potential nihilism and groundless relativism stemming from a merely mechanistic and reductionist view of the mind and of life. [p.329]

Our very interest in freedom from suffering and in not causing suffering unnecessarily and unwittingly [for example, our consumption habits and our willingness to go along with the population policies of prominent/dominating institutions] becomes a doorway into realizing a new dimension in being and an expanded way of living, based on the primacy of relationality and interconnectedness.

The process feels like nothing other than an awakening from a consensus trance, a dream world, and thus all of a sudden acquiring multiple degrees of freedom, many more options for seeing and responding and for meeting wholeheartedly and with mindfulness whatever situations we find ourselves in, that before we might have just reacted to out of deeply embedded and conditioned habits. It is akin to the transition from a two-dimensional "flatland" into a third spacial dimension, at right angles (orthogonal) to the other two. Everything opens up, although the two "old" dimensions are the same as they always were, just less confining. [p.350]

When we inhabit this orthogonal dimension, the problems of the conventional reality are seen from a different perspective, more spacious than that of a small-minded self-interest. The situations we face can thus admit possibilities of freedom, resolution, acceptance, creativity, compassion, and wisdom that were literally inconceivable -- unable to arise and sustain -- within the conventional mind set. [p.351]

The inertia and vested interests in maintaining the status quo in any situation or institution are not likely to either initiate or sustain the motive force behind and orthogonal rotation [expansion is probably more descriptive] in perspective. But nevertheless, when minds change, and vision changes, and people taste new possibilities for healing past wrongs and correcting fundamentally problematic situations, for making democracy more democratic, for insuring equal opportunity and basic human rights, usually interesting things happen that were previously thought to be impossible, or were never thought of at all. As a rule, our society and our institutions are the better for it.... [p.353-4]

The Stress Reduction Clinic has always functioned by design and intention as an orthogonal institution, aimed at bringing the methods and perspectives of mindfulness and of mindfulness-based mind/body approaches to health and healing into the mainstream of medicine. Just bringing the worlds of meditation and medicine together in 1979, to say nothing of including yoga, was, you might say, something of a stretch, an interpenetration of perspectives that ordinarily had virtually nothing to do with each other. [p.354]

But yet it has through the years become accepted into the mainstream. In some respects, I am simply expanding this concept to extend to the rest of our lives -- both work and leisure. Creating an institution that will enable us to move from possess to access -- the key to dropping the attachments that keep our world two-dimensional. It is remarkable how the inertia of our current mindset -- maybe mine-set is a more appropriate term -- makes it so difficult to sell a new concept.

From the very beginning, we presented MBSR [Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction] as a major challenge, and made it very clear that it was a huge lifestyle change just to take the program.... [p.356]

In so many ways, the world is crying out for orthogonal institutions that could be co-extensive with existent ones or for brand-new stand-alones, orthogonal in the larger world. They do exist...anywhere and everywhere people embody the principles of caring for the greater good, inquire deeply as to what that might entail, and then take care of what needs taking care of. [p.358]

I believe that the creation of an integrated residential environment (spa/university) -- whether for a few days or a lifetime -- can be a catalyst for the positive changes described by Jon Kabat-Zinn in this book that helps us identify the path towards a more mindful world.

Matt

Please note that I have gotten away from an earlier "promise" to publish on Thursdays only. I can't help myself. There are simply to many good books and ideas to share.

December 01, 2005

Our dominant institutions are unable to change the destructive course of mankind. While some of these institutions may be able shift to the positive side of the equation, it is doubtful that it will happen fast enough to assure a quality living environment for future generations. Therefore, it is critical to form new institutions that can provide a model for shifting our behavior so that the rights of future generations to a quality life are recognized. Evidence is overwhelming that preservation and restoration of all natural systems is a key to a quality life.

In order to shape a new institution, it is helpful to list the positive and negative attributes of our dominant institutions. (Please note that there are exceptions within any institution. This is a general description of the attributes.) In my opinion those are:

Religion- A positive attribute is that saints and sages throughout history have realized the wholeness of the universe. A negative attribute is that the religion of those who are most powerful in society today is one of fear as the result of the literal interpretation of scripture that was written hundreds of years ago when the population and the knowledge of the universe was much, much smaller.

Business/Corporations- A positive attribute is teamwork and goals. A negative attribute is that, by design, corporations do not have a conscience.

Education- A positive attribute is the compact and pedestrian-friendly design of many campuses. A negative attribute is that the primary reason for existence is to train people to work for corporations.

Politics/Government- A positive attribute is that a certain amount of governance is necessary in order to maintain a free and civil society. A negative attribute is that government is controlled today by the influence of religion and corporations.

As you can see, this is really very simple. The complexity comes into play when trying to understand why we as a society have allowed the negative attributes of these institutions to shape our lives. Many of the recommended books in the column to the left attempt to explain our irrational behavior.

We can analyze this irrational behavior until the cows come home -- or are genetically altered beyond recognition and prudence due to the negative attribute of corporations. What we need to do is form new institutions that integrate the positive attributes of the above institutions. Let's at least start the discussion.